The Leadership in Action Series: On Leading the Global Organization

By Stephen Rush

Organizations that have operations around the globe have become the norm rather than the exception. This means they need leaders with the requisite skills-including international business knowledge, cultural adaptability, perspective taking, and innovation-to respond effectively to the challenges and complexity of global leadership. This collection of seventeen pieces-written by the Center for Creative Leadership's highly experienced and knowledgeable faculty members and researchers as well as by prominent practitioners and scholars in the fields of leadership and leadership development-explores the important topic of leading the global organization from a number of angles. What can organizations and leaders do to develop the skills needed to excel in a global context? How can global leaders manage the relationship between corporate headquarters and local offices? How can organizations best handle the challenge of boundary-spanning leadership? Readers will come away with newly found knowledge on these and other questions and newly formed thoughts on how they can successfully meet the demands of leading the global organization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership
• Release date: Aug 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781604917468

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

In the past decade bookstore shelves (or perhaps more appropriately e-book and audiobook download lists) have been filling up with books about globalization, working globally, leading globally—and the list goes on. Succeeding in a global context is no longer a business strategy to gain a competitive edge; it is a business imperative in order to stay in the game.

The pieces in this fieldbook will help you explore the core issues and ideas about what it takes to lead yourself, others, and your organization in a global context. Different topics and diverse perspectives are presented, but underlying it all is the core capacity of learning how to adapt to and navigate in a global context.

This book is comprised of revised and updated versions of articles originally published in CCL’s magazine, Leadership in Action, between 2000 and 2010. It is the fourth installment in CCL’s The Leadership in Action Series; the first three are titled On Strategic Leadership, On Leading in Times of Change, and On Selecting, Developing, and Managing Talent.

The book offers a mosaic of wisdom and is organized in a way that allows you to focus on your particular area of interest or need, and although you do not need to read the pieces in sequential order, each piece offers unique value and is worth reading. Following are brief summaries of some of the perspectives found in this volume:

•  In Global Managing: Mastering the Spin of a Complex World, Christopher Ernst describes four pivotal capabilities: international business knowledge, cultural adaptability, perspective taking, and innovation. These key capabilities are the global manager’s axis—the knowledge, motivation, and skills needed to be effective and adaptable amid the complexity of the global marketplace.

•  In Challenge Match: The Stakes Grow Higher for Global Leaders, Shannon Cranford and Sarah Glover share six themes that emerged from interviews with forty senior global leaders from thirteen countries. The leaders were asked to describe their best and worst experiences in their global leadership roles and to give advice and opinions about how to lead in a global setting. This piece distills the information gleaned from the interviews into practical advice.

•  In For Global Managers, a World of Difference, by Maxine A. Dalton, Jennifer J. Deal, Christopher Ernst, and Jean Brittain Leslie, the characteristics that contribute to high performance by global managers are presented. The authors also offer suggestions for ways organizations can recognize and foster those characteristics.

•  In Leading Globally Requires a Fundamental Shift, Ancella Livers underscores that although many executives recognize that moving into a global position requires them to manage under multiple sets of laws, currencies, and time zones, many don’t understand that leading in a global setting requires a fundamental shift in their thinking and behavior. Executives have to understand that their ability to lead effectively is often determined by their followers’ willingness to follow, and they also have to recognize that they are embedded in multiple layers of complexity.

•  Michael H. Hoppe, in Adult Development Theory May Boost Global Leadership, raises an adult development perspective on global leadership as a means to help us realize that the majority of leaders function at a developmental level that rarely does justice to the complexities, diversity, and changes around them. He describes three stages of adult development—moving from dependent to independent to inter-independent—with the latter two levels including and integrating but also surpassing the previous level(s), and he applies them to leadership.

•  In Global Leaders Face Challenges in Asia, Sam Lam and Mohit Misra indicate that although much has been written about leadership issues in Asia, the focus has generally been on the context in which businesses operate and the critical role of understanding that context, building trust, and leveraging relationships. They acknowledge that these are legitimate points, but suggest that they are a gross oversimplification. Leaders in Asia need a sound grasp of the three C’s: context, content, and creativity.

•  In Getting to the Source: Four Perspectives on Leadership, David V. Day and Patricia M. G. O’Connor focus on how leadership is accomplished in a global context. They describe how different perspectives correspond to four leadership models: leadership by a strong individual, a hierarchy, a pipeline, and collective practices.

•  Hal Richman and A. William Wiggenhorn, in Hatching a Plan: Developing Leadership Talent in Emerging Markets, posit that there is a lot of talent waiting to be developed—and a lot of risk if this doesn’t happen. They also offer actions that organizations operating in emerging markets can take to strengthen their homegrown leadership pools.

•  In Across the Boards: How Chairmen’s Roles Differ Around the World, Andrew P. Kakabadse notes that board of directors chairmen have a wide range of responsibilities important for organizational success. But he also discusses a survey that discovered that practices of chairmanship and board dynamics differ around the world, and the implications of that finding for organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

•  In Bridging Boundaries: Meeting the Challenge of Workplace Diversity, Christopher Ernst and Jeffrey Yip propose that in a globally diverse and increasingly interconnected world, social identity boundaries rub together, pull apart, and collide in the workplace, and that when these identity divides open up, people look to leaders to bridge the gaps. The authors describe four tactics for bridging the gaps: spending, reframing, nesting, and weaving.

•  In Cultural Intelligence and the Global Economy, Joo-Seng Tan notes that the abilities to adapt constantly to different people from diverse cultures and to manage the interconnectedness of today’s world are critical. The global workplace requires individuals to be sensitive to different cultures, to interact appropriately with people from different cultures, and to analyze new cultures as they are encountered. To do all this, individuals, whether they are at home or abroad, need cultural intelligence, which is a person’s ability to successfully adapt to new cultural settings—that is, unfamiliar settings attributable to cultural context.

•  Maxine A. Dalton, in Cultural Adaptability: It’s About More Than Using the Right Fork, acknowledges that adapting to the cultures of the countries in which managers conduct business is a crucial capability, but also notes that it is an often misunderstood and oversimplified capability. As global managers work at adapting to other cultures, they need to be mindful of issues of appropriateness and ethics. This piece provides a useful framework for doing so.

•  In One Prescription for Working Across Cultures, Craig Chappelow offers a simple and familiar dictum to apply when visiting and working in other countries: First, do no harm. It boils down to using basic manners, employing self-awareness, and monitoring one’s behavior. In this piece, he shares a multitude of specific and often humorous stories based on his experiences working in different cultures.

•  In Getting the Message: How to Feel Your Way with Other Cultures, Don W. Prince and Michael H. Hoppe describe how the discomfort you feel when cultural boundaries collide can be used to your benefit by alerting you to cultural differences. The authors also note that when you work and conduct business with people of other cultures, your cultural biases can emerge with more force when triggered by this discomfort. They recommend staying with uncomfortable experiences and learning from them, and they offer specific examples and advice about how to do this.

•  The GROVEWELL-CFGU Partnership, in Gaining a Critical Edge in Mastering Globalization, suggests that the lessons learned in pursuing diversity and inclusion within a U.S. setting are, to some extent, applicable worldwide. But it recommends that intercultural consulting needs to be part of the approach as well. Together, intercultural consulting along with diversity and inclusion offer business leaders a critical edge in mastering globalization.

•  In "If It’s Lagom, This Must Be Sweden," Kristina Williams and Kay Devine describe Swedish leadership styles as an amalgamation of egalitarianism and consensus. They contrast the Swedish value of lagom, or just enough, with the North American value of more is better and use that to illustrate Swedish leadership styles in specific ways.

•  Elizabeth Weldon, in Seeking a Model for Leadership Development in China, shares the results of a survey about Chinese leadership and how it differs from leadership in North America. She offers three conclusions. First, building strong bonds based on collaboration, teamwork, dignity, and trust is a key element of both Chinese and North American leadership. Second, like North American leaders, leaders in China believe that one of their main roles is to improve the company; North American leaders, however, place more value on experimentation and taking risks. Finally, although Chinese leaders believe it is important to help others succeed, they also believe that this is of secondary importance.

That concludes my whirlwind tour of all this volume has to offer. Now it’s your turn to decide where to go first and dive in.

Kelly M. Hannum

Director, Global Research Insights

Center for Creative Leadership

Part I

BECOMING A GLOBAL LEADER

Global Managing: Mastering the Spin of a Complex World

Christopher Ernst

As the global economy has come of age, many managers have been thrust into leadership roles in which their skills don’t match the requirements of the job. But are the capabilities needed to succeed in a global context really so different from those that are critical for domestic managers? And if there are differences, what can be done to develop these new skills?

As a high-level manager at a U.S.-based manufacturing company, Matthew leads a number of teams. He has just been asked by his boss to turn over responsibility for one of those teams to someone else and take on a different task—managing a new plant in Frankfurt, Germany. The factory was recently acquired in a merger and there’s a lot riding on its success, so Matthew views his selection to manage it as a vote of confidence and another feather in his cap.

He starts to imagine what his life would be like as an expatriate. But reality stops him short—after all, his boss didn’t ask him to move to Frankfurt. He didn’t even ask him to spend a lot of time there. Instead, the boss wants Matthew to continue to manage his domestic teams as he always has and at the same time use the tools of technology—e-mail, videoconferencing, faxes, and the like—to connect with and direct his new team in Germany. The boss says Matthew needs to meet face-to-face with his people in Germany only occasionally.

Matthew believes that although his new task will mean some additional work and an increase in the scope of his job, he’ll be able to manage his new team in much the same way he has managed his domestic teams. But he’s in for a shock. He is about to take on a job that is not only bigger but far more complex.

Global managers are faced with a range of new challenges. They must become integrators of performance results, business acumen, social patterns, and perpetual technological advances, not only in their home bases but around the world. They need to acquire a new set of skills to effectively meet these complex challenges.

For many organizations, succeeding in the global economy has risen to the top of their agendas, and global managers are increasingly being asked to lead the way. And yet many managers find themselves in Matthew’s situation—thrust into a global leadership role in which their skills don’t match the requirements of the job.

What are those requirements? Are the skills required for success in managing a global operation completely different from those needed to effectively manage a domestic operation, or do they overlap? And what can organizations and leaders do to develop the skills needed to excel in a global context? CCL research work with a group of managers